


The V Word

by minkmix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Humor, POV John Winchester, Young Dean Winchester, Young Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 19:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16125230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: "It was sometime between Exit 25 and the turn off to Route 33 that John noticed his eldest’s profound enthusiasm over a few new words."





	The V Word

It was sometime between Exit 25 and the turn off to Route 33 that John noticed his eldest’s profound enthusiasm over a few new words.

Considering the kid was an entire twelve years old, John knew the lexis wasn’t something Dean had unearthed from some secret section of the dictionary. The subjects and predicates had been around way before people started naming people, places and things so they could jot symbols down in books. However, his son’s new practical application of such language was slightly unsettling.

“Sure is a nice day.” Dean said from the passenger seat. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

John knew a set up when he heard one.

It was easy to reprimand your kids for using certain vocabulary. There was a tried and true handful that every father knew didn’t belong in polite society despite personal opinion. His boys were getting hard to pin down these days for a bar of soap in the mouth but their old man still had some muscle on his side. The thing was that the late night cable profanity that plagued responsible mothers and religious community leaders was the least of John’s worries. A tour in the military had provided him with not only ten times the amount of casual swearing that the average citizen was aware of, but he had also come home with enough distasteful conversational jargon to write a dictionary himself. Unfortunately for John, he’d also inadvertently passed down every disrespectful maternal reference, derogatory feminization, endless toilet humor and enough slurs to get his ass kicked by any ethic group conceivable.

When most four-letter lingo came out of Dean’s mouth it was a total no-brainer when to tell him to stow it. If John wasn’t feeling particularly articulate at the time then it was a simple task to deliver a smack of warning across the head. Despite it all, John found that some forms of expression were becoming less and less clear. His kid had found a way to bypass the law and start making completely legal phraseology into something ambiguously offensive.

All of the raw knowledge combined with his children’s lucid imaginations made their mouths about as dangerous as that twitchy .38 caliber they bought third hand at a Vegas pawn shop.

“Look.” Dean pointed out the window. “The grass sure is succulent this time of year.”

John clenched his jaw.

He involuntarily glanced sideways at the miles of endless dairy farms in question. There were scattered herds of black and white bovines up and down the two-laner they’d been on all afternoon. John wasn’t sure what the state of the rain fed green might be but the adjective his kid had used was the most disagreeable way to refer to a piece of grass that he could possibly think of. Nonetheless, you couldn’t go pulling the car over and smacking the kid a good one for saying the word ‘succulent’. He knew there was no way it was going to stop there. Dean was working up to something. It had been a full morning of disturbing subverted context loaded with ammo like: regurgitate, globule, orifice, engorged and chunky.

“Hey, Sam?” Dean asked.

Sam peered distrustfully over the seat.

“Did you know you once had a vagina?”

John groaned.

“’Fraid it’s true.” Dean idly held his hand out into the hot flow of freeway air. “The vagina is a wondrous thing.”

Sam made a sound from the backseat depths that could have either been distress or outrage. John thought maybe the sentiment his brother was trying to impart might warrant both all at once. Still, he had to admire Sammy’s ability to withstand charging headfirst into a blatant baiting situation. John refocused his gaze on the road and braced himself. A father could learn a lot from his kids. He could learn not to feed any fires with juvenile encouragement. He could rise above it and be the better man—

“Right, dad?” Dean asked. “I heard in my science class that every dude is really a chick for the first few weeks in the uterine sack.”

“E-Everybody?”

“Everybody.”

“Even _dad?_ ” Sam countered dubiously.

“Yup!”

John had some vague memory of truth behind the statement but this was no time to be scaring Sammy shitless with vaginas. He debated on how to take some middle ground without appearing to take a side when he realized that his wavering uncertainty was as good as a seal of approval for his sons. Sam whimpered and Dean decided it was a cue to further elaborate.

“That’s some serious vagina time.” Dean explained. “I mean, you have a vagina and you’re living IN a vagina and you got nothin’ to look at but vagina.”

John glanced uneasily up into the rear view.

The eight year olds’ frown was as affronted as his own.

He growled and told himself that he was being fucking ridiculous. He’d seen plenty of vaginas. He’d seen vagina in so many countries he couldn’t even pronounce them all. He could even use the word in a sentence if he in fact wanted to. Hell, he’d been right there front and center when both his boys had arrived ungracefully into the world. If sitting first row for that brain breaking phenomena didn’t get you into the Vagina Club than he didn’t know what would.

His grip on the wheel tightened.

Dean cleared his throat hesitantly, his mission to skeeve everyone out becoming daunting for even himself. To the kid’s credit he continued to soldier on up the unpleasant vernacular hill of his own making.

“D-During ovulation the vagina may produce a moist discharge—“

“I don’t have a vagina!” Sam exclaimed indignantly.

John could see his other kid was immediately sorry he had snapped. The sublime satisfaction the reaction had given his sibling had shoved Sam’s nervous aggravation right into flustered fury. More importantly, Sammy was curled up with his arms wrapped over his face because he’d been forced to speak the word that had the inexplicable power to make skin crawl by careful enunciation alone.

There really was no place to pull over for the slap his oldest required and they were making good time, so John decided to go another route to put the brakes on the Vagina Monologues.

“Yer right, Dean.” John said. “About... that.”

“I am?” He was lost in his own unsavory terminology. “A-About what?”

“Your mother and I didn’t know you were a boy until show time.”

Dean blinked.

“You sure proved all those guys with the ultrasounds wrong.”

His kid was ready to laugh along until he saw his father’s serious face.

“Spent your first six months in a real pretty pink crib.” John told him. “It had little prancing ponies and rainbows on it.”

Dean was startled into silence by that offensive piece of mostly true information. John had actually had the sex of his first child withheld due to his wife’s sentimental preference for surprise rather than any physical irregularities on the zygote’s part. After a nurse accidentally revealed the secret during the third trimester, the house had already been filled to the ceiling with presents from well meaning relatives that were all convinced a little girl was on the way.

“Pink?” Dean repeated incredulously. “Ponies?”

There had really been a lovely pony crib but neither of his children had spent one second in it.

John vividly recalled the ensuing argument over spending money they didn’t have on something an infant would have no awareness of. He settled back into the driver’s seat and still felt his stern resolution on the subject of that matter. No boy of his was going to sleep in anything that wasn’t blue or camouflage. By the time Sam had come along he’d gotten a little more lax about how color exposure might affect his children’s testosterone. The inclusion of pastels, even of the manly green variety, hadn’t been easy but it was strange what a guy could get used to after a while. There was a dose of insanity that came with parental bliss. Spit up on your shirts and loaded diapers sitting on the counter where you brushed your teeth just became par for the course.

Apparently so were unending exchanges about female anatomy.

“Did you know what I was?” Sam asked hopefully from the tire wells. “Did you know I was a boy?”

“You bet.” John nodded. “You were no doubt.”

Dean hunkered down in his seat and got captivated real quick by the blur of roadside cow.

John smiled to himself as another mile marker went by. He might have brought back a lot of bad habits from his stint in the corps, but he had walked away with some invaluable life skills too. Resolving an issue without resorting to therapeutic but time consuming violence was always a high road he’d be open to take.

Outmaneuvering his diabolical spawn didn’t feel half bad either.


End file.
